He's one of the icons of modern-day Classical Music, a musician who's done the late-show circuit, first playing on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1958 when he was just 13, won enough Grammy's to fill a wall-sized case and an individual performer in the mold of the great violinists who came before him. Itzhak Perlman was born in 1945 in Tel Aviv, and since then has played with all the major orchestras of the world, giving thousands of concerts with orchestras or with a piano accompanist, solo on stage. Mr. Perlman was in the Twin Cities on October 21, 2003 to play a recital at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, the opening concert of the Schubert Club's International Artist Series. Accompanied by pianist Rohan da Silva, he played a program of Bach, Beethoven and Poulenc.

A few hours before the concert, Minnesota Public Radio's Mindy Ratner had a wide-ranging conversation with Mr. Perlman, whose ideas, philosophies and activities around music would leave most of us breathless.